


I want to say I love you (but I can’t find the words)

by pro_fangirl



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Alexithymia, Awesome Michelle Jones, F/M, Hurt Michelle Jones, I don’t know how to tag this, I’m not a doctor, Light Angst, MJ and Peter are so cute, Michelle Jones Needs a Hug, Michelle Jones-centric, POV Michelle Jones, don’t kill me, reflective thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-08-31 23:48:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20248645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pro_fangirl/pseuds/pro_fangirl
Summary: A story in which MJ navigates falling in love with Peter Parker while dealing with alexithymia.





	I want to say I love you (but I can’t find the words)

**Author's Note:**

> So I was writing a story with my friend, but this part didn’t make the cut. I still really like it though, so I decided to post it separately.
> 
> Enjoy :)

MJ could still remember the day the word had popped up in a book she’d been reading. 

Alexithymia.

Not knowing what it meant, she’d looked it up, and found herself staring at her phone screen with a mixture of shock, disgust, and realization. It had felt like when you are trying to understand how to do a math problem, and then suddenly something clicks, and everything comes into focus. 

It had been a moment of awakening.

MJ had known she was bad with feelings and emotions. She knew that something wasn’t right. Knew that most people didn’t have trouble connecting with other people and maintaining stable relationships. But she had put it down to her troubled childhood. Having your father leave when you were four and an alcoholic and abusive mother did things to a person’s head.

But the word and its definition hadn’t changed when she blinked. The words had remained on the screen, black like her soul, and MJ knew they would be forever branded in her mind.

Stupid dictionary.com. 

_ Alexithymia _ , she read, _ difficulty in experiencing, expressing, and describing emotional responses. _

Despite her newfound hatred for the word, MJ had opened another tab and done some research. She had to be sure, and ten minutes later she was.

_ People with alexithymia might have trouble identifying their feelings as well as others. _Check. MJ had never been able to read people as well as others did. Drawing helped though.

_ They might have difficulty describing their feelings to others. _Check. Introvert since birth, MJ had never really felt comfortable or able to accurately describe the tangled, thorny mess inside of her.

_ They often lack impulse control. _Double check. MJ didn’t have a sensor. Whatever she thought came out of her mouth. That problem had caused many awkward situations. 

_ Trait alexithymia is usually long term and often stems from neglect or abuse from a primary caregiver early in a person’s life. _One of MJ’s fingers extended in the direction of her mother’s room where she was currently sprawled over the mattress, dead to the world. She would have a massive hangover whenever she woke up.

Good.

MJ had closed the tab, then tried to go back to reading. But the word kept appearing over and over until MJ was sure the books sole purpose was to throw the word at her until she drowned in it. 

Swallowing bile, she put the book down.

The word had haunted her all day until she decided to simply ignore the problem. Push the word into an abyss of darkness so it would never see light again. If she didn’t think about it, it would never be a problem. Everyone already knew she was weird, they didn’t need to know her weirdness had a name. She didn’t want to be labeled. So if she pushed it away, it wouldn’t matter. She would still be the awkward loner who drew weird things, but that was okay. MJ was used to that. She could deal. But she couldn’t deal with that word, so she cocooned it in a shroud of hate and locked it up in the deepest, darkest part of her mind. Then she prayed to every deity she could name that she would never think of it again.

She succeeded for three years.

And then came Peter Parker.

He was weird and annoying at first. Making googly-eyes at that Liz girl. Disappearing from that lame party. Disappearing from Academic Decathlon. Disappearing from homecoming. He pretty much disappeared from anything.And then there had been the whole thing with Liz and her father. 

MJ had been surprised when the joy had bubbled up inside of her. It had taken a while to figure out why that particular emotion had taken hold when Liz had left for Oregon. 

It was because if Liz was in Oregon, then Peter was all hers.

That realization startled her and she would be lying if she said it didn’t scare her. She didn’t like Peter Parker. She refused to like him. He was weird, secretive, a little creepy at times. Although he was surprisingly fit for a teenage boy. 

Having alexithymia meant that you had trouble figuring out your emotions. It was like all her feelings were a tangled strand of Christmas tree lights. MJ was just thinking she had found the end of the strand and was beginning to untangle it when the Mad Titan Thanos had decided it was a good idea to wipe out half of earth's population. 

And apparently MJ was part of that half.

She’d been huddled in a dark corner of the school library, engrossed in a book about the civil war when she had been reduced to nothing but dust.

Apparently five years had passed before everyone came back. She’d (as the school called it) blipped back and scared the living daylights out of a guy. 

The first thing that popped into her head: man, that dude is hot.

He became slightly less attractive when she found out he was Brad Davis. The five years she had spent as dirt had been good to him. Now he didn’t cry every time he struck out in baseball. Actually, he just didn’t strike out. 

And then Peter was back, and MJ found any headway she had made with her tangled emotions was lost.

Well that sucked. In fact everything sucked.

But then there had been the announcement of the Europe trip. She was already mentally planning what she would need to bring the second she read the poster hung on the wall.

She had looked forward to that trip with every fiber of her being. She needed a distraction, needed to get away from her mother who unfortunately hadn’t blipped, but had lived and married a man who was hardly around. 

But the trip was still a couple months away, so MJ found herself hanging around Ned and Peter more and more. 

There was something about the duo, something not normal. It seemed that there was some secret between the two. Conversations quickly hushed when she joined them. Strange looks quickly flitting between the two boys. And excuses. Peter had strep throat. Peter had a family emergency. Peter had homework. 

It became clear to MJ that something was being kept from her. Naturally, she devoted herself to finding out what.

Somewhere in that process though, she found something else out.

She was in love with Peter Parker.

She’d tried to deny it. Tried so, so hard, but it was useless. She, Michelle Jones, was in love with Peter Parker.

And then something else occurred to her in the same kind of moment she’d had when she discovered alexithymia. 

Peter was Spider-Man.

Crap, was her first thought. Of course she had managed to develop a crush on someone who spent half his days swinging around in red and blue spandex. Of course.

MJ was only about sixty-six percent sure he was Spider-Man, but the only other thing she could think of was male escort, and Spider-Man seemed better than _ that. _

She wanted to ask Peter about it, but alexithymia meant that it was hard to have conversations about these things, and so she didn’t. She also wanted to say something about the fact that she was in love with him, but the words stuck in her throat and twisted around until they were entirely different words, and the conversation became something about the Black Dahlia, or murder, or books.

MJ really hated alexithymia.

She hated the fact that figuring out words, and feelings, and thoughts took time. She was smart. You had to be to attend Midtown. But she was smart in different ways than she wanted to be. She wanted to be able to hold a normal conversation. Wanted to be able to form words without them sticking in her throat. Wanted to be normal. She didn’t want to wait for words and feelings to become clear.

But the stupid alexithymia went against all of her wishes.

And then Europe happened. 

MJ was sure that everyone else hadn’t fully comprehended everything that had happened yet, and they didn’t have alexithymia.

It was all a blur. Memories of fire, death, and destruction all mixed with the constant feeling of fear.

That emotion had been clear at least.

Other things, too. Peter was indeed Spider-Man. That explained a lot of things. Including the abs. _ Especially _the abs. Not even Brad was that fit.

There had been that Beck guy, dubbed Mysterio, who had turned out to be evil. And the drones. She could still remember the mind numbing fear when they had chased her, her friends, Flash, and the weird guy who worked for Peter. She tried not to think about it that much because then she would flash back, and she was gripping the black spikey thing, and her mouth was dry, and she was running, hiding, heart beating rapidly, and surely the drone would shoot her and she would die again, but there would be no returning this time.

No. She wasn’t there. She was holding Peter’s hand. Her heart was pounding because she was walking alongside her boyfriend. Boyfriend. Wow. Add that to the list of things she still hadn’t wrapped her mind around.

Maybe it was okay that she had trouble figuring out what she was feeling. Maybe it was okay that she stumbled over words. Maybe it was okay that it took her longer than most to form a relationship.

Some things were worth the wait.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m not a doctor, so I’m sorry for any inaccuracies.
> 
> Have a great day, and God bless!


End file.
